This application claims foreign priority from EP 01301753.8 filed Feb. 26, 2001, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer program for determining a corrected position of an alignment mark on a substrate to be exposed in a lithographic projection apparatus comprising a radiation system for providing a projection beam of radiation; a support structure for supporting patterning means, the patterning means serving to pattern the projection beam according to a desired pattern; a substrate table for holding the substrate; a projection system for projecting the patterned beam onto a target portion of the substrate; and a measuring system for determining a position of an alignment mark on the substrate.
2. Discussion of Related Art
The term xe2x80x9cpatterning meansxe2x80x9d as here employed should be broadly interpreted as referring to means that can be used to endow an incoming radiation beam with a patterned cross-section, corresponding to a pattern that is to be created in a target portion of the substrate; the term xe2x80x9clight valvexe2x80x9d can also be used in this context. Generally, the pattern will correspond to a particular functional layer in a device being created in the target portion, such as an integrated circuit or other device (see below).
Examples of such patterning means include:
A mask. The concept of a mask is well known in lithography, and it includes mask types such as binary, alternating phase-shift, and attenuated phase-shift, as well as various hybrid mask types. Placement of such a mask in the radiation beam causes selective transmission (in the case of a transmissive mask) or reflection (in the case of a reflective mask) of the radiation impinging on the mask, according to the pattern on the mask. In the case of a mask, the support structure will generally be a mask table, which ensures that the mask can be held at a desired position in the incoming radiation beam, and that it can be moved relative to the beam if so desired.
A programmable mirror array. One example of such a device is a matrix-addressable surface having a viscoelastic control layer and a reflective surface. The basic principle behind such an apparatus is that (for example) addressed areas of the reflective surface reflect incident light as diffracted light, whereas unaddressed areas reflect incident light as undiffracted light. Using an appropriate filter, the said undiffracted light can be filtered out of the reflected beam, leaving only the diffracted light behind; in this manner, the beam becomes patterned according to the addressing pattern of the matrix-addressable surface. An alternative embodiment of a programmable mirror array employs a matrix arrangement of tiny mirrors, each of which can be individually tilted about an axis by applying a suitable localized electric field, or by employing piezoelectric actuation means. Once again, the mirrors are matrix-addressable, such that addressed mirrors will reflect an incoming radiation beam in a different direction to unaddressed mirrors; in this manner, the reflected beam is patterned according to the addressing pattern of the matrix-addressable mirrors. The required matrix addressing can be performed using suitable electronic means. In both of the situations described hereabove, the patterning means can comprise one or more programmable mirror arrays. More information on mirror arrays as here referred to can be gleaned, for example, from U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,296,891 and 5,523,193, and PCT patent applications WO 98/38597 and WO 98/33096, which are incorporated herein by reference. In the case of a programmable mirror array, the said support structure may be embodied as a frame or table, for example, which may be fixed or movable as required.
A programmable LCD array. An example of such a construction is given in U.S. Pat. No. 5,229,872, which is incorporated herein by reference. As above, the support structure in this case may be embodied as a frame or table, for example, which may be fixed or movable as required.
For purposes of simplicity, the rest of this text may, at certain locations, specifically direct itself to examples involving a mask and mask table; however, the general principles discussed in such instances should be seen in the broader context of the patterning means as hereabove set forth.
For the sake of simplicity, the projection system may hereinafter be referred to as the xe2x80x9clensxe2x80x9d; however, this term should be broadly interpreted as encompassing various types of projection system, including refractive optics, reflective optics, and catadioptric systems, for example. The radiation system may also include components operating according to any of these design types for directing, shaping or controlling the projection beam of radiation, and such components may also be referred to below, collectively or singularly, as a xe2x80x9clensxe2x80x9d. Further, the lithographic apparatus may be of a type having two or more substrate tables (and/or two or more mask tables). In such xe2x80x9cmultiple stagexe2x80x9d devices the additional tables may be used in parallel, or preparatory steps may be carried out on one or more tables while one or more other tables are being used for exposures. Dual stage lithographic apparatus are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,969,441 and WO 98/40791, incorporated herein by reference.
Lithographic projection apparatus can be used, for example, in the manufacture of integrated circuits (ICs). In such a case, the patterning means may generate a circuit pattern corresponding to an individual layer of the IC, and this pattern can be imaged onto a target portion (e.g. comprising one or more dies) on a substrate (silicon wafer) that has been coated with a layer of radiation-sensitive material (resist). In general, a single wafer will contain a whole network of adjacent target portions that are successively irradiated via the projection system, one at a time. In current apparatus, employing patterning by a mask on a mask table, a distinction can be made between two different types of machine. In one type of lithographic projection apparatus, each target portion is irradiated by exposing the entire mask pattern onto the target portion in one go; such an apparatus is commonly referred to as a wafer stepper. In an alternative apparatusxe2x80x94commonly referred to as a step-and-scan apparatusxe2x80x94each target portion is irradiated by progressively scanning the mask pattern under the projection beam in a given reference direction (the xe2x80x9cscanningxe2x80x9d direction) while synchronously scanning the substrate table parallel or anti-parallel to this direction; since, in general, the projection system will have a magnification factor M (generally  less than 1), the speed V at which the substrate table is scanned will be a factor M times that at which the mask table is scanned. More information with regard to lithographic devices as here described can be gleaned, for example, from U.S. Pat. No. 6,046,792, incorporated herein by reference.
In a manufacturing process using a lithographic projection apparatus, a pattern (e.g. in a mask) is imaged onto a substrate that is at least partially covered by a layer of radiation-sensitive material (resist). Prior to this imaging step, the substrate may undergo various procedures, such as priming, resist coating and a soft bake. After exposure, the substrate may be subjected to other procedures, such as a post-exposure bake (PEB), development, a hard bake and measurement/inspection of the imaged features. This array of procedures is used as a basis to pattern an individual layer of a device, e.g. an IC. Such a patterned layer may then undergo various processes such as etching, ion-implantation (doping), metallization, oxidation, chemo-mechanical polishing, etc., all intended to finish off an individual layer. If several layers are required, then the whole procedure, or a variant thereof, will have to be repeated for each new layer. Eventually, an array of devices will be present on the substrate (wafer). These devices are then separated from one another by a technique such as dicing or sawing, whence the individual devices can be mounted on a carrier, connected to pins, etc. Further information regarding such processes can be obtained, for example, from the book xe2x80x9cMicrochip Fabrication: A Practical Guide to Semiconductor Processingxe2x80x9d, Third Edition, by Peter van Zant, McGraw Hill Publishing Co., 1997, ISBN 0-07-067250-4, incorporated herein by reference.
For the above mentioned manufacturing process and especially during the imaging step it is necessary to position the substrate and the mask on respective object tables with a high accuracy with regard to each other. For this purpose alignment marks are provided on the substrate and in the mask. An alignment system such as described for example in WO 98/39689 or U.S. Pat. No. 4,778,275 incorporated herein by reference, can be used to align a mark in the mask with respect to a corresponding mark on the substrate. If a mark on a substrate is not correctly aligned to the corresponding mark in the mask this alignment error will cause an error in the super-positioning of two images exposed on successive layers on the substrate. This error in the super-positioning of two images is generally called an overlay error. If a large overlay error occurs, the substrate or a device finally cut out of the substrate may be rejected during a quality inspection.
One of the first steps that is accomplished when a new substrate is to be manufactured in a lithographic projection apparatus is that alignment marks are exposed on the first layer of resist on the substrate. These marks will be used for aligning the subsequent images to be exposed in subsequent layers of resist on the substrate. The deposition of additional layers and the processing necessary to finish off these subsequent layers may affect the alignment mark such that the alignment mark is shifted in the plane of the substrate. This may cause overlay errors between layers on the substrate.
In EP 1 006 413 an apparent alignment offset caused by a resist layer on top of an alignment mark is detected using an off-line alignment tool to measure the mark shape before and after resist coating. An offset value derived thereby is provided to a lithography apparatus and used to correct alignment during an exposure. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,418,613 the wafer magnification due to a spin coated resist layer is determined by performing a statistical analysis on the measured position of a number of reference marks on the wafer and used to correct alignment during exposures.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a computer program for determining a corrected position of a measured alignment mark on a substrate to be exposed in a lithographic projection apparatus.
This and other objects are achieved according to the invention in a computer program for determining a corrected position of an alignment mark on a substrate to be exposed in a lithographic projection apparatus, said computer program comprising program code means for, when executed on a computer system, instructing the computer system to perform the steps of controlling a measuring tool to measure the position of at least one alignment mark on said substrate overlaid with an Al layer; calculating a corrected position of the alignment mark on the basis of the measured position of the alignment mark and a model of a process apparatus involved in deposition of the Al layer.
The present inventors have determined that a significant source of overlay errors in the shift in position of alignment marks when overlaid by an Al (aluminum) layer and that the alignment shift can be predicted on the basis of a mould of the apparatus that was used to deposit the Al layer. By aligning the patterned beam onto a target portion of the substrate with the corrected position of the alignment mark it is possible to avoid overlay errors caused by process layers deposited upon an initial mark on a substrate.
Preferably, in the step of controlling a measuring tool, the positions of a plurality of alignment marks are measured; and said step of calculating a corrected position comprises using the measured positions of said plurality of alignment marks to find parameters of said model of said process apparatus.
In this approach, details of the geometry of the process apparatus used to apply an Al layer to a given substrate need not be known in advance but are determined or inferred from the measurements made on the substrate. This simplifies data flow and housekeeping in the device manufacturing process, particularly in relation to parameters of the process apparatus which are not stable in time, e.g. parameters changing due to target aging in a physical vapor deposition (PVD) tool. Where some parameters of the process apparatus are relatively static and known in advance, these may be included in the model. Alternatively, all parameters of the model may be derived from the measurement data.
Sets of parameters of the model may be derived for each substrate and used to correct the alignment of subsequent exposures of only the respective substrate. Alternatively, a set of parameters may be derived from measurements taken from one or more of the substrates in a batch and used to correct alignment in subsequent exposures of all substrates in the batch. Clearly, this is only appropriate where all the substrates have been processed in the same tool.
According to a further aspect of the invention there is provided a device manufacturing method comprising the steps of providing a substrate that is at least partially covered by a layer of radiation-sensitive material; providing a projection beam of radiation using a radiation system; using patterning means to endow the projection beam with a pattern in its cross-section; and projecting the patterned beam of radiation onto a target portion of the layer of radiation-sensitive material, characterized by the following steps: using a measuring system to measure the position of at least one alignment mark on said substrate overlaid with an Al layer; calculating a corrected position of the alignment mark on the basis of the measured position of the alignment mark and a model of a process apparatus involved in deposition of the Al layer; and using the corrected position of the alignment mark to align the patterned beam to a target portion of the substrate.
The present invention is also applicable to alignment marks overlaid with a layer of tungsten (W), such as in gates.
Although specific reference may be made in this text to the use of the apparatus according to the invention in the manufacture of ICs, it should be explicitly understood that such an apparatus has many other possible applications. For example, it may be employed in the manufacture of integrated optical systems, guidance and detection patterns for magnetic domain memories, liquid-crystal display panels, thin-film magnetic heads, etc. The skilled artisan will appreciate that, in the context of such alternative applications, any use of the terms xe2x80x9creticlexe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cwaferxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cdiexe2x80x9d in this text should be considered as being replaced by the more general terms xe2x80x9cmaskxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9csubstratexe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9ctarget portionxe2x80x9d, respectively.
In the present document, the terms xe2x80x9cradiationxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cbeamxe2x80x9d are used to encompass all types of electromagnetic radiation, including ultraviolet radiation (e.g. with a wavelength of 365, 248, 193, 157 or 126 nm) and EUV (extreme ultra-violet radiation, e.g. having a wavelength in the range 5-20 nm), as well as particle beams, such as ion beams or electron beams.